Is it difficult for communists and anarchists to understand that often politicians say one thing and do another? While, at this time, we can't and won't know all the details, the U.S. government has a long history of funding, organizing, supporting, and/or aiding right wing coups in Latin America and then denying their level of involvement.

Is it difficult for communists and anarchists to understand that often politicians say one thing and do another? While, at this time, we can't and won't know all the details, the U.S. government has a long history of funding, organizing, supporting, and/or aiding right wing coups in Latin America and then denying their level of involvement.

Clinton is of course telling porkies!
It is fairly obvious that the Honduras military would not do this without some involvement with US spook services but I think it is a domestic. American policy will never be benign to workers at home or abroad and they want a pop at the peoples Gomez in Venezuela so yeah it is concerning- global capitalism is always on the march. Business as usual.

Mr Zelaya, elected for a non-renewable four-year term in 2006, had wanted a vote to extend his time in office.

His arrest came just before the start of a referendum ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and opposed by Congress.

There had also been resistance within Mr Zelaya's own party to the plan for the vote.
...
Congress swiftly appointed its speaker Roberto Micheletti - a member of Mr Zelaya's Liberal Party, but an opponent of him - as acting head of state.
...
Later the Honduran Supreme Court said it had ordered the removal of the president, who had been due to leave office next January.

Then Congress produced what it said was Mr Zelaya's letter of resignation, which it voted to accept. The ousted president dismissed the letter as a fake.
...
The military's dramatic move came after President Zelaya sacked the chief of the army, Gen Romeo Vasquez, on Wednesday for refusing to help him organise the referendum.

In what way is this a coup? Parliament and the Supreme Court used the military to remove a wayward President. Sounds like a very boring reconfiguration of capital in Honduras. Who's been hurt other than this self-important moron?

It seems like a conservative turned lightweight social democrat was ousted by a rightwing military. It seems a regressive step and is totally undemocratic - not merely, "a very boring reconfiguration of capital".

It seems like a conservative turned lightweight social democrat was ousted by a rightwing military. It seems a regressive step and is totally undemocratic - not merely, "a very boring reconfiguration of capital".

The supreme court and congress telling the military to get rid of the president? In what way is this undemocratic?

bens wrote:

That he was a conservative turned pink?

I don't really care.

bens wrote:

That the military is rightwing?

Unlike those places where the military is flooded with washy liberal social-democrats who just want to hug and kiss everybody?

bens wrote:

Pointless debate, think what you want to.

I don't know what to think. I'm apparently not as well-versed as you are in the intricacies of Honduran politics. But the only outside source of data that's come up until now supports me rather than you. You're more than welcome to change this.

The supreme court and congress telling the military to get rid of the president? In what way is this undemocratic?

who cares if it is though? it's not like the fact the he was elected "democratically" means anything.
and who cares if it's a right-wing military junto who takes his place and not a Chavez no. 2?
Workers will have to suffer the horrific consequences either way.

Quote:

left leaning government helping the poor

this has to be a joke.
A quick search on wikipedia shows just what a hero this bleeding heart leftie is:

Quote:

During the election campaign Zelaya promised to double police numbers from 9,000 to 18,000.

Because there's no better way of helping the poor than kicking the shit out of them or putting them in jail.

On the police thing, sometimes people in areas with lots of anti-social crime want more police, and it's usually poorer areas. I'm not saying this was what his rhetoric was about- that would require research- but it might have been.

Is it difficult for communists and anarchists to understand that often politicians say one thing and do another? While, at this time, we can't and won't know all the details, the U.S. government has a long history of funding, organizing, supporting, and/or aiding right wing coups in Latin America and then denying their level of involvement.

Clinton is of course telling porkies!
It is fairly obvious that the Honduras military would not do this without some involvement with US spook services but I think it is a domestic. American policy will never be benign to workers at home or abroad and they want a pop at the peoples Gomez in Venezuela so yeah it is concerning- global capitalism is always on the march. Business as usual.

That's a reasonable enough assumption, but we'll need some evidence. I wouldn't assume that the CIA and the Obama administration are working in complete tandem either.

Meanwhile, for those morons that still believe what happened in Honduras was legal, some basic facts. If you can give me cogent, democratic reasons for any of these then you have the right to move your madness forward.

* The forced explusion of Zelaya from Honduras was both against the law and against the constitution that the coupmongers say they were protecting.

* The resignation of Zelaya needed to be made to congress. The coupmongers did this by presenting a clearly falsified document to the parliament, one Zelaya says he did not sign and even the US State Dep't has said cannot be taken seriously.

* There was no attempt to impeach Zelaya and remove him by legal methods.

* Since seizing power, the de facto government has suspended several articles of their precious constitution, including articles that protect basic human rights including habeas corpus.

* Troops have been captured on video shooting out bus tires as they tried to transport people to the capital city in order to protest the de facto government.

* The Colon region of Honduras is now under an all-day military controlled curfew, the measure passed to stop residents from travelling to the protests scheduled in the capital today. The announcement came yesterday afternoon and caused panic amongst people had just two hours to buy in provisions before the extended curfew began.

* Media have been silenced with only pro-government news items allowed on TV, radio and newspapers. Pro-Zelaya Canal 36 has been closed down against the will of its director and is guarded by troops. Apparently CNN is "on the payroll of Hugo Chávez" which explains why it has been suppressed inside Honduras.

* The leader of the 3-16 death squad from the 1980's has been appointed as ministerial advisor.

* The mayor of San Pedro Sula has been deposed and arrested. In his place Micheletti has appointed his cousin (this one of many examples, unfortunately).

Treeofjudas I don't share your view of democracy. If the ruling elite acts through its supreme court and its judicary it may be legal but it's not democratic in any meaningful sense of the word.

More important than Zelaya's ouster is the reaction of the Honduran people to it; they know a coup when they see one, and it seems that they're taking to the streets to resist the coup rather than in defense of Zelaya. Whatever they think of his tepid social democratic policies the alternative is worse.

Teachers strike against the coup. In the article below from the Honduran press it refers to earlier strikes for non-payment of salaries, which I guess means they had locked horns with the Zelaya administration, although the leadership at least seems to be backing him against the golpistas right now:

Can we change the title of this thread? True or not, it's such a load of patronising, bigoted shite to assume that those poor lil Latinos are incapable of organising their own coup or having a regional bourgeoisie and ruling class without the Pigdog Imperialist Bastards destroying their noble savage existence.

EDIT moreover, in the context of the public pronouncements of the Obama administration (which differ markedly from those of Reagan when he definitely was orchestrating coups in Latin America), it's actually completely at odds with the dynamic of this particular current affair.

Anarkismo on the coup. Haven't properly read it yet, but they're calling for popular mobilisations against the coup, seemingly believing that people's consciousness will be raised by fighting for Zelaya (?).

I stand corrected, then. I still don't see why communists should give a lot of crap about this specific unsuccessful Chavez-wannabe. The other issues there are far more grave. But as usual, this is all going to become a personal drama about this individual bourgeois saint. Just ask the Chavez-groupies around here.

x359594 wrote:

Treeofjudas I don't share your view of democracy. If the ruling elite acts through its supreme court and its judicary it may be legal but it's not democratic in any meaningful sense of the word.

Democracy itself isn't democratic in any meaningful sense of the word. Wait, let me look up at the address bar... yep, I'm still on libcom, the libertarian communist website, not libdem, the liberal democracy forum where people pine for civil rights and wider popular participation in the democratic process.

x359594 wrote:

More important than Zelaya's ouster is the reaction of the Honduran people to it; they know a coup when they see one, and it seems that they're taking to the streets to resist the coup rather than in defense of Zelaya. Whatever they think of his tepid social democratic policies the alternative is worse.

Yeah, I'm guessing they're a mite pissed off to be getting a miliary junta again. But guess what - a military junta can have all the trappings of a democracy. It's easy to be misled, to ignore the fraying along the edges (or the tears down the front, these days). Take it from someone who lives in one.

None of this changes the fact that this "democratic hero" is nothing but an unsuccessful leader of a bourgeois faction, and I'm not going to be risking my life to reinstate his ass, and neither would I recommend that for the working class in Honduras.

Treeofjudas I don't share your view of democracy. If the ruling elite acts through its supreme court and its judicary it may be legal but it's not democratic in any meaningful sense of the word.

I thought that banning politicians and political parties through the courts was a normal part of the democratic process. It certainly is in this country.

x359594 wrote:

More important than Zelaya's ouster is the reaction of the Honduran people to it; they know a coup when they see one, and it seems that they're taking to the streets to resist the coup rather than in defense of Zelaya. Whatever they think of his tepid social democratic policies the alternative is worse.

There are coups and coups. The 1980 coup in Turkey unleashed a huge repression against the working class. The 1997 coup was virtually unnoticable, the governing party was quietly made illegal, its leaders banned from politics and everyone got on with their lives.

Just because people are in the streets does not mean this is a class movement. Is it in the interests of the working class to fight to defend democracy? Won't social democrats be equally forced by the crisis to attack workers' living conditions.

Yeah, I'm guessing they're a mite pissed off to be getting a miliary junta again. But guess what - a military junta can have all the trappings of a democracy. It's easy to be misled, to ignore the fraying along the edges (or the tears down the front, these days). Take it from someone who lives in one.

The civil resistance movement is being coordinated by the Frente Nacional contra el Golpe de Estado, which counts unionists as one of its biggest components. In fact, it's been using union facilities to meet, leading to union locales being targeted:

Movimiento a Socialismo wrote:

Tegucigalpa, 26 July: An explosive device was set off today in a trade union building in the Honduran capital, shortly after the end of a meeting of anti-coup groups.

The explosion was in the men's toilets but caused no injuries, although it did cause structural damage.

The device was placed in the building of Sindicato de Trabajadores de Bebidas y Similares (STIBYS), soon after 1pm local time, by which point most of the meeting's attendees had left.

The same group also reports illegal land grabs by landowners in rural areas:

MAS wrote:

Honduran landowners are attempting to take advantage of the institutional crisis the coup-plotters have created in the seizure of lands from rural smallholders, the Costa Rican newspaper La Nacion reports.

One of the leaders of the Campesino del Aguan movement, Adolfo Ruiz, stated by telephone that "the landowners want to legalise [land] invasions and attacks on our communities", justifying their actions with fraudulent claims as to the presence of arms and Venezuelan and Nicaraguan nationals.

On 13 July, the military attempted to enter Ruiz's village, "but the community met them with machetes and sticks".

One blog also has a communique claiming to be from an anonymous section of the Honduran military's officer corps, criticising high command's role in the coup:

Our comrades in Venezuela have written this analysis of the role played by local and international bourgeoisies in the coup, or in backing Zelaya. It rejects support either for the military or 'left' fractions of the ruling class.

In the wake of Zelaya's entrenchment in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, de facto President Micheletti effectively suspends rights of freedom of speech, assembly and habeus corpus for next 45 days:

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